May 3, 2022
Marana Rotary Club
Hybrid meeting
Meeting was called to order by Randy Brooks, John Dooling lead us in the Flag Salute.
Randy stated that he would like to cancel the Board Meeting.
Adam Potential member was introduced in person.
Mary said that Felicia’s Farm came in under budget both the District Funds and funds donated by the Rotary Club of Marana. From our club it was $123.00 Peter Mack motioned to donate the funds back to Felicias Farm vs taking the money back and Harold Butzloff second the vote was made, and it was will in favor. The district funds will have to be returned to the Charitable Funds for 5500.
Randy announced the sad news about the passing of Liz Cohn on 5/2/22. The District is going to give her a Rotarian for life. Also her club wants to create a Scholarship Fund in her name for the UofA.
Lynne said we grossed $1535.00 from the shred event. Randy said Don offer to pay the Shred Truck.
50/50 tickets were sold Denise was the lucky one and pulled the Joker the pot was $180.00, and she donated it back to the club.
Happy Bucks
Bob the Computer is working we have Biffy from all the way in Africa
Lynne did not have a good day yesterday, but the Startbucks server had a wonderful smile.
Kathy said she is just happy.
Adam happy to be in person
Dan just happy
Sulee Just Happy
Harold Happy Computer worked for zoom
John Shredding event was a great event
Becky Happy she gets to babysit grand baby.
Pete Happy that someone else has learned the computer
Lynne told one of her great jokes “Did you hear about the hen who laid orange instead if egg and all the little chicks were running around, saying look at the orange mama laid”. Hahaha
Kathy Dooling said they had a great outbound exchange student orientation
Denise is happy
Laura said she didn’t have a good week and didn’t elaborate
Mary happy her brother is visiting
Carol happy her 95-year-old mother few across the country to come and visit (I hope we can all do that someday)
Randy he is happy that Biffy is with us today – he also gave a statue to John and Cindy Dooling for the daughter because she said she just bought a bicycle built for two.
Speaker was Elizabeth (aka BiffY) Danckwerts from the Eastern Cape of Cape Town. Biffy was brought up in Eastern Cape and did a short stint in Johannesburg for 4 years in the 80’s. She joined Rotary in May of 2005 and was awarded a PH in 2009 and again 2019. Biffy serves in her club.
Biffy is currently starting new Satellite Club called the MAD Rotary Club, she said this should be a fully-fledged club within a year.
What an interesting lady – wish the vocals would have been better.
She is the happiest working in Khayelitsha, it means new home) and her second language is Xhosa. She showed us pictures of the houses they are nothing more that shacks. Some of the small houses have 3-8 children in the tiny little house.
She showed us a great PowerPoint about the school she is working to improve. The kids there are so excited to go to school. She has done so much to help the kids have a great education. She showed of the school, library, courtyard, lunch area. She showed us the original computer room and now they have an updated computer room the kids have 90 minutes per child to work on the computer there are 96 computers in the room.
There are 1205 children in the school each day and it’s a very sandy play area. She had tried to grow trees, but they won’t grow.
The kids must be feed breakfast and lunch each day. And they all sit in the cafeteria on the floor in the lunch area. Most of these kids come from homes with illiterate parents most of them don’t know how to read or write.
Most of the children had never heard any kind of classical music, the now have a conductor and the children are playing instruments.
There were 46 children per classroom before now they have hired more teachers.
This was a great presentation from her.
Randy said when he was visiting Biffy in Africa there was a house that had the Rotary seal on it. Randy said she has a hug heart and how she has worked with the children.